


Reboot

by trash4ficsaboutlurv



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, M/M, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 17:04:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9558668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trash4ficsaboutlurv/pseuds/trash4ficsaboutlurv
Summary: The Avengers are fighting a swarm of bots trying to reach the southern coast of America when Steve pushes Sam's buttons.





	

“Anyone else noticing the distressing lack of gravity?” Clint yelled, grabbing on to a control desk as his feet left the ground and a loud whistling noise filled the cabin.

“That would be the free-fall,” Tony said over the comms. “The bots have quite thoroughly fucked with this hellicarrier’s thrusters.”

Sam planted his feet and held on to the control desk in front of him, trying to quickly calculate if he could carry Nat, Monica, and Wanda off this thing.

“Wanda?” Steve called. “Think you can handle it?”

Wanda glanced at Sam apprehensively and he nodded. If they hadn’t been plummeting to their deaths in the Gulf of Mexico, Sam would have found it sweet that the kid still looked to others for reassurance of her own power. As it was…

“You got this,” he said.

Wanda took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “I’ll try,” she said. The red smoke of her magic gathered and condensed in her waving hands, forming a crimson ball of energy. She raised her arms to the ceiling and the tendrils of magic attached to the structure of the hellicarrier, braiding themselves into the metal beams. The freefall slowed immediately and then stopped altogether and Sam’s ears popped.

“Good girl,” Steve praised. Then, “Rhodey, get that one behind you!” The sounds of Steve’s fist on metal echoed over everyone’s headsets.

“You keep us in the air,” Sam said to Wanda. “I’ll keep the bots off you.”

Wanda nodded and bit her lip in concentration. Her arms undulated and her eyes glowed red. Sam opened his wings up to shield Wanda on one side and started shooting any bot in his line of sight on the other. He shot down two bots on Natasha’s six and Nat turned and blew him a kiss before tossing a sticky electrical charge at the chest of another hurtling toward Clint. Monica’s photon blast lit up the room as she took out the next wave swarming in through the giant hole in the hellicarrier’s side.

“Hey Tony, how long does it take to repair some thrusters?” Sam called through his comms as he programmed Redwing’s lasers to the heat signature of the robots.

“As the only genius on this ragtag team,” Tony said snippily.

Rhodey cleared his throat over the comms and Tony corrected, “As the only genius currently in the room with the broken thrusters, I _meant_ \---I think I deserve a little more respect.”

“Rhodey, why don’t you get in there and give your buddy an assist,” Steve yelled. He grunted and something exploded in the background. Sam looked up at the hole in the ceiling where he could make out Rhodey’s blasts streaking through the air and then the blur of Steve’s shield flying. Rhodey and Steve were both in the upper level of the hellicarrier, separated by the bot swarm that had crashed without warning through the sides of the ship. The metal limbs and parts showering outside the windows were proof that they were handling their own up there.

“Little preoccupied with covering your blind side,” Rhodey said. “But Tony’s such a genius. I’m sure he’ll figure it out.”

“I’m gonna pay for that when this is all over, aren’t I?” Tony said.

“If we all survive,” Rhodey answered. Then, “Steve, they're breaking through the wall!”

“Nat,” Sam said. “Why aren’t they powering down yet?”

Natasha grimaced as she typed away furiously at the control center’s keyboard. “The code keeps changing,” she said. “This is Ultron-level tech. I can’t override it. The codes are coming from the hellicarrier itself. Somehow the craft’s gone rogue. I can’t control it.” She bit her lip and stared at the rapidly changing code falling down the screen. “I can read it, though. And these little bogeys have new orders. Coordinates.”

“To where?” Monica asked, shooting another massive blast at the bots crawling inside.

“The Big Easy, herself.”  

Sam turned his head toward the coast line where he could just about make out some beach front property. He wasn’t as knowledgeable about geography as maybe he should have been and he had no idea if he was looking at Louisiana, Mississippi, or some other of the Deep South states. Just then, four bots charged toward Sam’s uncovered side and he only had time to yell “Monica!” before shielding Wanda and himself in his wings again. He felt the scorch of Monica’s energy bolts around him and the hellicarrier wobbled again.

“Stop doing that!” Tony yelled over the comms.

“It’s not her fault!” Sam shouted. He released Wanda from his wings and she went back to holding up the ship.

Sam shot another couple bots coming up on Natasha as she continued to keyboard smash the system. He turned at the last second to catch a bogey over Wanda’s shoulder.

“Clint,” Sam shouted. “I can’t cover Wanda _and_ Nat. Come on, dude!”

Clint kicked a bot through the chest and sent it flying across the room. “I’m down to three arrows,” he said, holding up his bow.

“Whose fault is that?” Sam asked. “How many did you bring? Eleven?”

“Ha ha ha,” Clint said dryly. He broke off the leg of the bot he’d just downed and started using it like a baseball bat, sending metal flying. “I’m Sam,” Clint said in a mocking falsetto, “and I’ve got wings. Which makes me eternally useful.”

“Let’s not air all our insecurities at once,” Nat said.

“I’m not insecure. My arrows are—“

“Fuck!” Sam shouted. He pulled Wanda to the ground as a chunk of hellicarrier broke off and careened toward them. Another massive hole in the hellicarrier wall had just opened and more robots were climbing in.

“Dammit!” Tony yelled as the hellicarrier went into free fall again.

Sam grabbed Wanda’s shoulders. “Focus, kid.”

“It’s hard to do, when you keep knocking me around,” Wanda griped, reasserting her magic.

“Saving your life,” Sam corrected. “Nat, forget the coding. Go help Monica.”

Nat nodded and pulled out her electric batons. Sam glanced back at Monica, who was creating a net of energy over the two gaping holes in the wall. Bots that tried to cross the energy were getting fried on contact and the hellicarrier was starting to smell like ozone and steel.

“How long can you keep that up?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know,” Monica gasped, already sounding exhausted.

“Tony!” Sam yelled.

“Fuck, I’m trying.”

“Try harder!” Clint shouted.

“They’re getting out,” Rhodey called.

And sure enough, Sam saw bots on hoverboards streaking back toward the coast.

“That’s no bueno,” Clint said.

“No,” Sam said as he saw his husband go falling out the window without a parachute or any means of flight. “ _That’s_ no bueno. Nat!”

“I got Wanda.”

“Clint, can you break this glass?”

“Won’t that just let more bots out?”

“Clint!”

“Fine. One of my last three arrows oughta do the trick.” Clint strung his bow and let loose an arrow that thunked into the bulletproof, windproof, bomb-proof, magic-proof glass. Within seconds, the glass had turned to ice. “Just give her a tap,” Clint said.

“It’s gonna change the pressure in there!” Tony yelled.

“Wanda?” Sam said.

“I can handle it,” she said.

“Good.” Sam looked around at his team and nodded. “Gotta go save my idiot husband, I guess.” He ran at the glass full speed and let his wings break it open. As the wind caught under his wings and lifted him up, he could hear Clint yelling, “I said tap!!!!” behind him.

He scanned the area for signs of Steve below. Maybe a dozen bots on hoverboards had escaped Rhodey and Steve’s containment, but more were appearing in the sky with every second. Rhodey had followed Steve out and was shooting them down as fast as humanly possible, but more kept coming.

“Rhodey,” Sam called. “Where’s Steve?”

Rhodey swiveled around and pointed. Sam followed his finger and saw his husband hanging by his fingertips off a hoverboard while the board’s current occupant tried to shoot him off.

“How many times,” Sam shouted as he shot bots out of the sky to rescue his foolish husband, “do I have to ask you not to fucking jump off things when I can’t catch you?”

“I’m fine,” Steve gritted out.

“You’re dangling off a hoverboard a thousand feet above the Atlantic Ocean. Run that by me again.”

Steve yanked the robot off the hoverboard and threw it out to sea. At the same time, the hoverboard dropped like a cannonball because apparently it didn’t hover without the bot attached.

“Shit,” Sam swore, diving toward Steve as fast as he could. The wind clawed at him vindictively, fighting him for every inch. Sam closed his wings to get some more speed as he careened towards Steve’s falling body. Steve reached out a hand and Sam screamed at the sharp pain of unfurling his wings again with the added weight. He tightened his core and went straight up into the sky, ignoring the discomfort for the sake of Steve.

“Guys, these thrusters can’t be fixed,” Tony said. “Not even by yours truly.”

“And Monica and Wanda are fading in here,” Nat said.

“I’m fine,” Monica called weakly.

“Baby?” Rhodey yelled. He heaved a bot into another and streaked back toward the hellicarrier, shooting robots out of the sky as he went.

Sam pulled Steve to the top of the hellicarrier and dropped onto his hands and knees gasping. His shoulders felt like they had been wrenched out of their sockets and he didn’t want to move in case they had been.

“You okay?” Steve asked.

Sam concentrated on breathing as he yanked his comm out so the rest of the team wouldn’t hear his next words. “You…are… _such_ …an…asshole.”  Pain was shooting through his legs and arms like bolts of lightning and a wave of nausea hit him in the gut.

“Sam,” Steve pled, “they were getting away.”

Sam dropped onto his back and stared up the sky as more bots zoomed past. The clouds and hoverboards seemed to lunge in at him and then retreat hastily, like some kind of dizzy acid trip. He turned onto his side so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit if this nausea came to something. His breath staggered in his chest and belatedly he realized he was having a panic attack. Yep, that’s why his vision was going all cobwebby and dark. Fuck. This wasn’t the time.

 “Steve,” he tried to say, but he could tell the word hadn’t come out. There was a vice-like grip on his neck. He flailed, trying to bat away the bot. It had to be a bot. He couldn’t see it, but it had its hands around his throat. It was sitting on his chest. They were all plunging into the sea. His wings were broken. He was gonna throw up. He was gonna die. They were all going to die. Wanda and Monica couldn’t hold up the hellicarrier and stop the bots. Tony couldn’t fix the thrusters. The bots were going to New Orleans. Steve had fallen. Steve was gone. Sam’s wings were broken. And there was a bot on his chest. They were going to die. Everyone was going to die.

“I’m here,” someone said. “You’re safe, Sam. You’re safe. We’re safe.”

That was Steve. Which meant. Steve hadn’t fallen. Sam focused on that thought like a piece of driftwood in the ocean. Steve hadn’t fallen. Breathe. Steve was here. Breathe.

You’re having a panic attack.

_Yes, I know. Make it stop._

How do we make it stop?

_I don’t know._

We breathe.

_Can’t._

Yes, you can. It’s easy.

_Bots on my chest._

Breathe anyway.

_We’re dying._

Take a deep breath, Sam.

_I—_

Deeper. You’re doing great. You’re so good at this. Breathe.

_I—_

This is a panic attack. This is adrenaline and bad thoughts. What do we do when a system short circuits?

_We…_

What do we do?

_We reboot._

How do we reboot?

_We take a deep breath._

Sam gasped and sat up.

“Are you okay?” Steve asked, gripping Sam’s shoulder.

Sam pushed Steve away and fumbled for his comm.

“Guys, how’s Monica?”

“She’s out,” Rhodey said.

“Shit. Okay, um, Tony does your suit have an electromagnetic pulse?”

“Yeah, a medium one. Emergencies only. It’ll put me out of commission though.”

“Big enough to take out this carrier?”

“Maybe,” Tony said slowly. “Me and Rhodey together definitely. Why?”

“The bots are being controlled _through_ the hellicarrier,” Nat realized.

“So, we short-circuit the control center.”

“They don’t get commands—”

“They stop fighting—”

“We all get to go home--”

“And take a nap.” Clint whooped. “That’s some good team thinking.”

 “Wanda,” Sam said, “how are you doing in there?”

“She’s got a nosebleed,” Nat said. “This is too much for her.”

Sam nodded. “Okay. There’s a jet in the top deck. It can seat six. So, Nat will fly out Monica, Tony, Rhodey, Clint, and Steve. Tony and Rhodey, get out of your suits. Can you preset the pulse?”

“Yeah,” Tony said.

“Good. Set it for ten minutes.”

“I don’t think Wanda’s got the kind of time,” Clint said.

“I can do it,” Wanda said thinly.

“Set it for five,” Sam said, “and get your asses to that jet now. It’s hard to take off when your runway is falling. Everybody move. I’ll fly Wanda out when you guys are clear.”

“Roger.”

“Got it.”

“We’re on our way.”

Sam walked to the edge of the hellicarrier and looked down at the choppy ocean underneath them.

“Sam,” Steve said quietly.

Sam pulled his comm out again. “I don’t want to talk about it right now. Go help Rhodey. Without his suit, he can’t walk.”

Steve bit his lip and looked at Sam guiltily.

“Fucking go,” Sam said. “We don’t have a lot of time.” He opened his wings and swooped down through the broken glass.

Back on the second deck, Clint was walloping bots left and right to keep them off Wanda who looked pale and drained. Sam pushed him to follow Nat and the other’s retreating figures.

“Get her out of here alive,” Clint said. He kissed the top of Wanda’s head before dashing away.

“Hey,” Sam murmured. He wrapped Wanda in his wings with his back to the swarm of bots. “We’re just gonna ignore everything out there, okay?” He steeled himself against the bots bouncing off his wings, trying to get in at them.

Wanda nodded, her magic looking wispier and wispier by the minute.

“You’re doing great,” he said soothingly.

Wanda leaned her head against his chest. “You too. I felt your fear up there.”

Sam nodded. “Let’s talk about that a little later. Does it help if I touch you?”

“Yes,” Wanda whispered. “Pietro used to.”

Sam encircled her dainty wrists with his hands and he felt a little jolt, a sort of imbalance of self. “Is that you?” he asked.

“Siphoning off a bit of your energy,” she admitted.

Sam nodded. “Just don’t put me on E.”

They stood together, listening to the mechanical clatter and metal-against-metal clamor of their enemy outside the protective fold of Sam’s wings. Sam couldn’t be sure, but he thought maybe they were slowly losing some altitude. He looked down at Wanda and the red glow of her eyes was dim, like a dying ember.

“Somebody talk to me up there,” Sam said.

The comms crackled with static for a few seconds and then Nat’s voice came through, “We’re clear, Sam. Get out of there.”

“Hear that, Wanda? You can stop. I’ve got you.” Sam used the little control pad on his wrist to set Redwing’s blasts to electric shock. “Redwing’s gonna clear a path for us and I’m gonna run us out that window, okay?”

Wanda nodded, her green eyes back to normal but her skin clammy and pale. The small drip of blood under her nose was dark and ominous.

Sam pressed the charge button and unfurled his wings, the snap of it knocking some bots back. He pulled Wanda up into his arms and barreled through the narrow lane of bot-less floor that Redwing was offering him. And then he realized that the pulse was most definitely gonna kill Redwing.

“Shit,” he whispered as he threw himself into the sky and carried Wanda to safety.

 

Fury met them on the beach where they had all collapsed to catch their breath. It was an odd sight, seeing him in his leather trench on an abandoned stretch of sand and crashing waves. Agent Hill and Sharon flanked him.

“Looks like you saved the day,” Fury said drily, observing the beat-up group of them. He tilted his head. “Quinjet is cloaked over there. Wanda needs medical. So does Monica. Tony. Sam.”

Sam shook his head. “I’m fine.”

“You got that look in your eyes, son. I’m putting you in medical.”

Sam didn’t feel like fighting about it. He shrugged his wingpack off and pushed it into Steve’s arms without looking at him. “Okay,” he muttered and trudged toward where Fury had pointed. He could just make out a shimmer of the Quinjet through its cloaking.

Inside the Quinjet, Helen Cho and her team took him and the others who needed medical to the back of the plane and tended to them. Sam got an oxygen mask and an IV of something that made him feel lovely, heavy and lethargic but in a good way, like all the problems of the world had been solved. They had hooked him up to a machine that beeped out his heart rate and the steadiness of it was reassuring. “Is it okay if I sleep?” he asked. 

Dr. Cho smiled at him sweetly. “You’ve had a long day, Sam.  Of course.”

 

When Sam woke up, he was in the Avengers HQ in D.C. They’d taken the IV away and he was in one of the on-call rooms in a bottom bunk. He reached out for his phone and looked at the time. And date. It felt like he must have slept a week. But it was only the next morning. 4:47 AM.

He wondered if Steve had gone home.

Then he remembered he was mad at Steve.

And he wanted to go home and give Steve a piece of his mind. Could he justify taking out one of the SHIELD vehicles to go yell at his husband? This would be their first fight as a married couple, Sam realized as he pulled on SHIELD sweats. They’d had a spring wedding down in Atlanta just two months ago. And then the Hacker had come on the scene and started terrorizing the team. The Hacker’s hijacking of the hellicarrier and sending thousands of bots to do God only knew what to New Orleans was only the latest in a series of skirmishes.

Sam laced up his tennis shoes and opened the on-call room door. The bright fluorescent light of the hallway made him wince.

“Sam,” Steve said bounding out of the chair he had placed across from the door. “You’re awake.”

“Yeah,” Sam said warily. “You’re here.”

“I was worried about you. After…”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “After.”

Steve fiddled with the ring on his finger, twisting and turning it up to the knuckle and back down to the base.

“You were a real asshole out there,” Sam said – calmly, coldly.

Steve smiled. “So you said.”

Sam shoved his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. “I’m not kidding around, Steve. What you did out there? That wasn’t being a team player. That was being Mr. Invincible. You’re drinking your own Kool-Aid, man.”

Steve frowned. “Come on, baby. I was trying to keep containment.”

“In what way was your strategy designed to be effective?” Sam asked. “Were you going to get hit with some fairy dust and learn to fly? Were you going to pancake into the ocean so hard you created a tidal wave that drowned the robots?”

“Sam—”

“Because I can’t think of a single way you were helping the team by what you did.”

“I know with your history—”

“This isn’t about my history, Steve. I had a panic attack because you fell. Fine. That happened. It sucked, but it happened. But you could fall making totally rational, good decisions. That’s not what happened out there.”

“Sam—”

“You were reckless. You were selfish. You took _my_ eyes off the goal because you decided to jump off a hellicarrier a thousand feet in the air, Steve. A _thousand feet in the air.”_

Steve hung his head.

“What were you thinking you could accomplish?”

“I wasn’t so much thinking.... I was just focused on the goal. And the bot jumped, so I did do. I’m sorry, Sam.”

Sam shook his head. “We’ve talked about this before. And seeing you do that – seeing you take a suicidal and completely unjustifiable risk like that – it makes me think about when I first met you. I didn’t fall in love with that guy. I was _terrified_ for that guy.”

“I know.”

“And you’re talking about starting a family. You’re talking about growing old together. I’m gonna be alone, Steve. Alone.” Sam squeezed his hands, hidden in the front pocket of his hoodie. “If you do something like that and I’m not around to catch you, you die. Not to sound like a dick here, but I’m tired of needing to catch you because you want to take absurd risks.”

Steve nodded. “I was an asshole,” he said heavily.

“Don’t just say what I want to hear,” Sam warned him. “Really understand where I’m coming from or we’ll be having this conversation again the next time some big bad jumps off a cliff and you go in after ‘em. Unless you’re dead.”

Steve bit his lip and nodded. He peeked up at Sam through his absurdly long lashes and Sam noticed the faintest lavender shadows under his eyes, which said he hadn’t been to sleep yet. If he was a regular human, those shadows would look like bruises.

“I know you’re still mad at me,” Steve said slowly, pushing off the wall and closing some of the distance between the two of them, “and I know you’re talking sense, but...can I hug you? I’ve wanted to for almost 16 hours.”

A smile tugged at the corner of Sam’s mouth. “I’m still mad at you,” he said. Steve nodded repentantly. Sam opened his arms and Steve stepped into the embrace like they’d been separated by thousands of miles and many moons. He held Sam tight, buried his face in Sam’s neck and sighed.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. He rubbed Sam’s back in deep, reassuring strokes then brought their foreheads together. “I’m sorry, Sam.

“You’re exhausted,” Sam whispered.

Steve smiled. “It’s 5 in the morning and I woke up at 5 in the morning yesterday.”

“The on-call room only has twin-sized beds.”

“What’s the matter? You don’t think we can fit?”

“No,” Sam laughed. “We’re two grown men.”

Steve grabbed Sam by the hips and started walking him backwards into the on-call room.

“That wasn’t a challenge,” Sam yelped as he was lifted off the ground. “It was a point of fact.”

“We’ll just have to get snug,” Steve said. He divested Sam of the sweats he had just put on. “Because I’m not driving back to our house. And I’m not sleeping without you.”

Sam let himself be spooned on the microscopic bed. “I’m still mad at you,” he mumbled, but he didn't mean it and Steve knew he didn't. And probably Steve was going to be a little more conscientious about his reckless heroics and probably Sam was still gonna worry to the point of fury, but they were okay. 

"Tony put on the report that it was your idea how to beat the bots," Steve said sleepily, his words mushed and slurred. 

"Yeah?" Sam asked.

"Um-hm. Seemed pretty insecure about his team genius status with you saving the day like that."

Sam grinned. "You know just what to say, don't you?"

Steve yawned. "My Sam. Hero."

"Go to sleep, love. You're loopy."

"Love," Steve murmured and then his breathing got slow and even and deep, and Sam followed him into the sweet, sweet dark. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Not gonna lie: Redwing drone dying choked me up a little bit.


End file.
